And that route is pretty much closed today. If you want to go and re-do the Japanese path starting with motorcycles and then working your way up through simple cars and then more and more luxurious and complex versions then today's 'simple' car is much more complex than the simple cars that Japan started out with. The barrier to entry is much higher than it was in the 50's and the 60's, this goes for any manufacturer. Witness the amount of crap leveled at Tesla for fit-and-finish when none of that would have even been a footnote for a new car launch several decades ago.

Just for a reminder of how bad it really was: at the end of the British Leyland body assembly line men with large hammers would whack the doors from below to make them close properly. Body panels were simply not made to the same standard that they are today and people didn't care that much about such stuff.